Monday, June 23, 2014

Return to the Forbidden City!

My school district has some pretty amazing and committed people working in it and, thanks to their willingness to do more for kids, we'll be offering several optional Summer Enrichment Camps for students this July. The course catalog includes classes on animation, dissection, cake decoration and ... you guessed it ... Adventure Games!

That's right, yours truly will be introducing groups of 12 to 20 sixth through eighth graders to some basics in (non electronic) games.

Right now I'm planning to teach them how to play the following:

Smallworld

Settlers of Catan

Castle Panic

Robo Rally

Carcassonne

Risk

The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus

Cadwallon: City of Thieves

Red November

Wiz-War

Citadels (Fantasy Flight cardgame)

... and of course this creates another opportunity to introduce teens to tabletop role-playing. I plan once more to wield Dagger for Kids, chiefly because of its accessibility, but also because I can afford to send kids home with their own copy of the rules at the end of class along with their very first d20 and maybe a cheap mini or two.
I'll likely use Bawal Bayan and the nearby seas and islands as my default mini-sandbox setting, and hope to have at least a few kids running adventures for each other by the end of the program.

I'm again going with a high fantasy pseudo-Renaissance-European-colonials-explore-darkest-Hepmonaland theme and will use it to create continuity through the various games we play (though some will have to be re-skinned of course).

I've ordered a half-dozen cheap model ships and plan to have a bit of naval action take place in the cafeteria (Plukish pirate / slavers vs the Bhatvian Overmarshal's fleet perhaps?). I'm thinking three kids per ship: captain gives orders, helmsmen moves the ship, lieutenant fires the guns (thrown marshmallows?).

Are there any games conspicuous because of their absence from my list?